Nonstop competition for Bears' Caleb Williams as he chases top QBs, fights off upstarts like Fernando Mendoza
INDIANAPOLIS — The Bears were in the Raiders’ shoes at the NFL Scouting Combine just two years ago as they held the No. 1 overall draft pick and hoped to transform their franchise by landing a dynamic quarterback in Caleb Williams.
Just as Williams was the runaway top prospect in his class, so is Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza. He’s the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, a freshly crowned national champion and a sure bet to be the top pick in April.
It’s a reminder to the Bears that they’re far from unique in their aspirations. They’re chasing the established teams, of course, but even as they strive in their rebuild, plenty of competitors are, too. Every year, another team is angling to overtake them in the race to the top, and new quarterbacks will take their shot at surpassing Williams.
The Titans’ Cam Ward, Giants’ Jaxson Dart and Saints’ Tyler Shough hit the NFL as promising rookies last season, and the latter two already are off to solid starts.
Now it’s Mendoza’s chance, although he played it humbly Friday at the NFL Scouting Combine by saying he’d be grateful to picked at all, “whether it’s the No. 1 pick or the 199th pick,” which was quite different from Williams saying with certainty he’d be the first pick whether it was to the Bears or not.
Mendoza is the consensus best quarterback, and the top three teams in the draft — Raiders, Jets, Cardinals — need one. He completed 72% of his passes last season, averaged 220.9 yards per game, led the country with 41 touchdown passes and threw just six interceptions.
“Right now I’m unemployed,” he said with a huge smile. “This is my job interview. I’m just trying to do everything to hopefully get employed April 23.”
The conversation will get more serious soon. Like Williams, Mendoza will enter the league with the burden of enormous expectations. The wayward Raiders are banking on him to lift them from years of struggling, and part-owner Tom Brady figures to be instrumental in his development.
Brady is intent on building the Raiders into a winner and was widely seen as the Bears’ top competition to recruit coach Ben Johnson last year. It says a lot if he signs off on Mendoza, and his influence could be just as impactful as Johnson’s has been on Williams.
“To be mentored by him would mean so much,” said Mendoza, who spoke with Brady via phone during his meeting with the Raiders’ delegation at the combine. “I’ve got to learn a lot. It’s a long journey and to have a mentor like that would be pretty impressive and meaningful.”
The Bears likely won’t see Mendoza until the 2027 season when they’re slated to play the Raiders in Las Vegas, so he’ll be well into his development by that point.
He and Williams have faced each other before, actually, as Mendoza mentioned Friday the “tough defeat” in 2023 when he was at Cal and Williams was at USC. Williams threw for 369 yards and two touchdowns to win 50-49 as Mendoza’s pass for a two-point conversion in the final minute was incomplete. Mendoza threw for 292 yards and two touchdowns as a red-shirt freshman.
If Mendoza elevates the Raiders, they’ll become one more obstacle for the Bears in the harsh ecosystem of the NFL, a zero-sum game in which one team’s gains always come at the expense of another. It’s never as simple as merely finding solutions to your own problems; those solutions have to be better than other teams’ solutions.
The competition never stops as Williams is trying to prove he’s a top-10 quarterback next season and earn a landmark contract extension to solidify himself as the Bears’ centerpiece. He was better last season under Johnson than he was as a rookie, but his next step needs to be bigger.
He was top-seven in yards (3,942), touchdown passes (27) and fewest interceptions by percentage (1.2% of his passes), but also finished 22nd in passer rating (90.1) and last in completion percentage (58.1).
There’s work to do there, and he has to improve better and faster than his peers. He’s trying to catch up to the great quarterbacks, but he also has to stay ahead of others from his own draft class and upstarts like Mendoza.